The Way to Gaamaak Cove by Doug Pope
Doug Pope writes about the Alaskan backcountry better than any writer I’ve ever read. The Way to Gaamaak Cove is more than just a great adventure, it is coming-of-middle-age in which one man confronts life’s big questions, reevaluates his priorities, and discovers the biggest adventure of all—love.
—Jonathan Evison, author of All About Lulu, West of Here, and The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving
In The Way to Gaamaak Cove, Doug Pope asks himself, "Is love your greatest risk or is risk your greatest love?" The answer emerges as he chronicles the exhilaration, tribulations, and serenity of wilderness travel. What makes this book so distinctive is how beautifully Pope ranges beyond the usual tales of Alaska adventure to reveal the story of a man who discovers his truest self with the woman who shares so many of these journeys. In language spare and affecting, these accounts overlap and braid and eddy out, illuminated by a rare vulnerability and a keep attentiveness to the moments that add up to a life filled with meaning.
—Sherry Simpson, author of Dominion of Bears: Living With Wildlife in Alaska, The Accidental Explorer: Wayfinding in Alaska, and The Way Winter Comes: Alaska Series
Doug Pope turns out to be as lucky in love as he is in grizzly bear encounters. These linked tales of true wilderness and true romance have enough things going wrong to keep the pages turning. Sometimes, survival and love are not that far apart, as we see in this richly detailed tribute to a family and to Alaska.
—Tom Kizzia, author of Pilgrim's Wilderness: A True Story of Faith and Madness on the Alaska Frontier, and The Wake of the Unseen Object: Travels Through Alaska's Native Landscape
To download a full-color map that is in the book, click this link for a pdf version
Doug Pope was born and raised in Interior Alaska. When he was twelve, after spending a winter night on a bed of spruce boughs in an army surplus sleeping bag, he read Jack London’s To Build A Fire. His first non-fiction story, published when he was in high school, was set in a drafty trapper’s shelter while four friends struggled to feed a fire at forty-five below. His writings have appeared in Alpinist, American Alpine Journal, Alaska Dispatch, Cirque, A Literary Journal of the Pacific North Rim, and the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, and his writings and photos have appeared in the Anchorage Daily News and the Anchorage Press.
He lives in Hope, Alaska with his wife Beth.